SpectreTown, Stoirm Òg’s co-production with Cumbernauld Theatre, lacks focus and seems to be flying off in different directions at the same time. This leads to a production that is almost wilfully confusing, but has an undeniable power.

Elspeth Turner’s story, set in the North East, takes its inspiration from the Bothy Ballads and operates in a double time scheme.

Elspeth Turner. Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic

In the past, there is the story of farmhand Doddie West and his romance with Nan; a romance that is hampered by his interest in a new minister who preaches social equality, and by his induction into the secret society that is ‘the horseman’s word’. A parallel story unfolds in the present, with Mark Wood and Turner herself playing parts in both.

The Doric language may seem to present an initial barrier for some, but it is cleverly and simply used. Other elements of the play, however, may present greater barriers to understanding.

Here we seem to have not just a variety of influences, but several different plays. The sequences set in the past have echoes of Bondagers or Knives In Hens, in the evocation of a vanished rural way of life with its hardships, entrenched system of power and harsh magic. The modern-day sequences are more melodramatic, almost approaching League of Gentlemen territory in the one-armed Izzy (an effectively otherworldly Bridget McCann) chasing rats.

a Doric Eugene O’Neill

The combination of the two time periods deals with the ‘stain’ of history and inheritance like a Doric Eugene O’Neill. The two stories never come together in the way they might, and some of the characterisation is bafflingly unsubtle. Turner’s energetic, sparky style and Wood’s more downbeat playing are both impressive, but work against each other rather than together.

The set is distractingly cluttered, much of the puppetry is difficult to make out, and Matt Regan’s folk-inspired music is diffuse and naggingly ethereal. All of this helps to give the piece a troubling, almost nightmarish atmosphere that is further enhanced by some jarring leaps in time and tone. Matthew Lenton’s direction is so admirably clear-sighted at times that it seems obvious that those parts left opaque are deliberate. The overall impression is of an overwrought, overcooked and thoroughly uneven piece.

Which is what gives it much of its appeal. There is an undeniable power to the production lingering after the end that would be absent in a neater package. There is a darkness and fatalism to the story, and a rawness and fallibility to the people in it, that has a deep and troubling resonance, while its determination not to be easily understood or processed is praiseworthy.